Generator sound proofing

[DWT]

Incredible looking work. Any of you have solar or wind as another way to be quieter?

 

[jfw46544]

Very nice. Thank you for the pictures and ideas.

 

[churchmouse]

Incredible looking work. Any of you have solar or wind as another way to be quieter?

Cost on both is just way to high for emergency needs. I can have 2 good gennys, enough fuel reserves for a long period For less than a solar set up.

 

[dusty88]

Incredible looking work. Any of you have solar or wind as another way to be quieter?

Solar is incredibly expensive for the return; in fact it may be negative because the equipment needs replacement before you get your cost back (as compared to electricity).

If you mean purely for backup power, from what I have seen, that's what really makes solar expensive: a good battery bank.

With plenty of $$, it would be nice to have certain things on solar.

The only "solar" we have now are a couple of lights and a fence charger. The fence charger was about $90 and I bought it more for location (ie not to run cords nor deal with a battery constantly running low).

Conversely, I looked at converting my chicken coop automatic door to solar. The battery and adapter would have been about $100. Doesn't sound like much, but having it on an extension cord costs almost nothing. With several days of door opening and closing, it barely registered on a wattmeter.

 

[churchmouse]

Solar is incredibly expensive for the return; in fact it may be negative because the equipment needs replacement before you get your cost back (as compared to electricity).

If you mean purely for backup power, from what I have seen, that's what really makes solar expensive: a good battery bank.

With plenty of $$, it would be nice to have certain things on solar.

The only "solar" we have now are a couple of lights and a fence charger. The fence charger was about $90 and I bought it more for location (ie not to run cords nor deal with a battery constantly running low).

Conversely, I looked at converting my chicken coop automatic door to solar. The battery and adapter would have been about $100. Doesn't sound like much, but having it on an extension cord costs almost nothing. With several days of door opening and closing, it barely registered on a wattmeter.

I have built up several battery banks for myself and friends with off the grid cabins etc. The invertors can be insanely expensive. I used to have a source for the invertors out of Motor homes going to be scraped. That has dried up.
Batterys (good deep cycle) are also salty.

No more than we loose power (once a year if that) we have 2 genny's for the houses. Cords are on the genny's and we all know the drill.

 

[bwframe]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but a huge problem with the battery banks is that the battery life is fairly short. Combine that with their high pricing and you have a problem justifying the investment, correct?

 

[churchmouse]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but a huge problem with the battery banks is that the battery life is fairly short. Combine that with their high pricing and you have a problem justifying the investment, correct?

If you start with fresh deep cycle Marine Gel cells and use smart chargers they have a much longer life.
If the banks are never cycled they will be short lived. We cycled ours once a month at least. There are smart chargers out there that will handle 4 or more batterys. We had 8 batts. in our last bank and it would run both refrigerators and the furnace with basic lighting all night. If we ran the bank down I had some serious chargers that would top it off easily even on the genny's.

They are not plug and play. Like anything they require attention.